


Homecoming

by keira_irl



Series: Teatime Universe [2]
Category: EVE Online, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, Lesbians in Space, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-03-13 12:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13570230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keira_irl/pseuds/keira_irl
Summary: A crossover betweenTeatime with JaneandFault, Homecoming is the story of a young woman, ostracized by her choices, struggling to find happiness in a universe striving for quite the opposite.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Teatime with Jane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12690465) by [Skairunner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skairunner/pseuds/Skairunner). 
  * Inspired by [Fault](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11804583) by [keira_irl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keira_irl/pseuds/keira_irl), [Xaiya_L](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xaiya_L/pseuds/Xaiya_L). 



“ _ Ikarus _ , you are cleared for dock. Prepare for hull inspection.”

“Copy that,” I replied, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It was always the same thing, every time I visited.

I dropped my shields, watching as two Protectorate cruisers peeled off from formation, their sublight drives trails of blueish white on the blackness of space visible in my viewscreen.

It was the treatment Protectorate ships gave suspect-tagged ships. Mandatory inspections, to help make sure everyone played nice. And if a suspect got tagged with contraband?

I tried not to think of that. That was how they’d gotten Kate.

The radio buzzed, one of the cruisers—the  _ Eimyrja _ , I noticed. “ _ Ikarus _ , transmit cargo and crew manifests. You know the drill.”

I had already hit the send button the second the datalink between our ships went active. I idly checked my internal ship’s log. The same ship had led the inspection last time I’d visited, four months ago. And the time before that. Huh.

The sensation of the hull scanners caused me to shiver. Through my neural links it almost felt like a tickle running through the hull of my cruiser. A long, uncomfortable minute passed as the beams worked their way over the ship. I swallowed, readjusting myself in my seat as much as I could with the cables in the way.

“You okay, Brenna?” Jordan asked, manning the second console. I glanced over at him. His expression was concerned.

I nodded weakly. “Yeah. It’s just... unpleasant. They’re taking their time with it, too.”

I knew he didn’t approve of my modifications, but he’d kept it to himself. We’d talked, once. His older brother, Nick, had been in an accident. A grav field had flickered as he was moving crates through an airlock. He’d been pinned, and ended up with a spinal injury that had paralyzed him. For some reason, the medbays couldn’t help. Jordan couldn’t remember why, or maybe he didn’t want to say.

An implant had saved his life. It let him walk again, work again. But it had made him… an outsider, like me.

A cyborg.

Jordan reached across the gap between our respective seats, reassuringly rested his hand on my shoulder. Letting me know it was okay.

I gave him a weak smile, just as the sensation of the inspection ceased. “ _ Ikarus _ , we are transmitting nav guidance now. Docking bay C-85,” the voice of the  _ Eimyrja’s  _ comms officer came over the radio.

I suppressed a groan. About as far as you could get from anything important, and still be aboard the  _ Daedalus _ . Maybe I could have lodged a protest—after all, I’d spotted the ‘hidden notes’ on my ship’s database entry. But there were bigger problems. I was just thankful it hadn’t been the ‘expired transponder certification’ debacle like it was last time.

The guidance came over, and I sent it off to the autopilot. “You good taking her in the rest of the way?” I asked Jordan. “I’d like to go get dressed.”

“Yeah, go for it, Brenna,” he said quietly. I flipped the switch on my console, and the lights dimmed from a cool blue to darkness.

One last look over the ship’s systems, in my head. Everything, as always, was green. The  _ Ikarus  _ was a fully-functional Stratios-class cruiser. And I wouldn’t hear it any other way from the inevitable dockmaster who had a bone to pick.

I sighed, and issued the mental command to release the links. One by one, my awareness of the internal systems vanished from my consciousness, and cables retracted from my body and back into the module I’d fitted behind my chair.

I was filled with an immense sadness as the last module winked out. Without the protective cocoon of awareness of my ship, I felt... naked, exposed. It was silly, I knew. This was how most people lived. So  _ unprotected _ .

I pulled myself up, walked to the back of the narrow cockpit, the hatch automatically cycling open as I stepped close. The common area was empty, which was rare. But when half the crew had arrest warrants over something or other, it was safer this way. Not that I’d expect them to go that far to spite us, but it was still a precaution worth taking. Between my implants and Jordan’s raw skill, we could pilot it perfectly fine by ourselves long enough for this quick visit.

I walked across the area and through the door to the Captain’s quarters. My quarters. It only took a moment to change out of my pajamas and into a flight suit—the irony of wearing that when I was done with flying didn’t escape me. Still, it looked nice. Pristine dark grey, with our emblem—that of the Ravens—proudly emblazoned on the breast. I’d had to have mine custom-made to accommodate my wings, but the cost was certainly okay to handle when I considered the alternative.

I sighed. Forty three point six percent mechanical. Cyborg. Between the neural implants, the wings, the replacement eye, and my legs... Once I hit fifty percent, I knew I couldn’t do this anymore.

Guidelines put in place by the Protectorate hobbled cyborgs who went past fifty percent. Restrictions on most Protectorate-managed stations. Loss of protective rights. Effectively guilty until proven innocent.

Between that, and the fact that most private stations outright  _ refused _ to let ships that had them on board... it was practically a death sentence, an erasure from existence survivable only by monsters like Bonesaw, and warlords like that Hebert woman.

All because I had  _ implants _ .

I unclenched my fists, and distracted myself by making sure my hair was decent in the mirror. Then I grabbed enough makeup to hide the scarring going across my right eye. I could have probably gotten it fixed, but it would have been a waste of money. Easier this way.

Besides, the eye bugged me more than the scar. The one implant I’d gotten out of necessity rather than desire. It matched the blue of my natural eye, and for the most part it looked perfectly normal. Only when you were looking close did you notice that the iris was a six-bladed mechanism, like an aperture on an antique camera’s lens. That my pupil was hexagonal instead of circular.

After I’d gotten my neural implants, I still thought of myself as human. After I’d had to replace my legs, still human. Even my wings. It wasn’t until I’d lost the eye that that perception had changed. Turned me into an  _ almost-human _ .

I looked away from the mirror, stepped into some magboots, and walked out of my quarters.

“Hey,” I said to Jordan as I stepped back into the cockpit. I guess it was technically a  _ bridge _ , or it was at one point, before I’d had it modified.

“Hi,” he said back, not looking away from the viewscreen. We were already inside one of the  _ Daedalus _ ’s massive hangars. Even as I watched, the ship shuddered as the docking clamps engaged, pulling us in the rest of the way.

“Just in time,” I quipped, giving him a brief hug before stepping away. “I’ll be quick. Don’t forget to sync the media databases!” Not that he’d forget a second time. Two months stuck watching reruns? No thanks.

I made my way back through the ship, through the common room and past the so-called war room. Past the workshop Alex and I shared, and the temporarily-vacant crew quarters.

The airlock slid open as I approached, and I stepped through. A brief five seconds of claustrophobia, then the other side slid open. No need for the skybridge they’d ‘forgotten’ to extend.

I jumped out, flapping my wings with slow beats to stay afloat as I traversed the gap between my ship and the concourse. The  _ Daedalus _ only kept half-gee to save on energy, so I didn’t even have to pulse the thrusters to stay afloat.

I landed on the other side with a clack of magboots hitting the deck. I walked down the hallway to the concourse proper, a smile on my face growing as I saw the figure waiting for me.

Dad ran forward, throwing his arms around me in a hug. Four months since I’d last seen him. “Brenna!” he exclaimed. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“You too, Dad,” I said with a smile, stepping back. “Sorry for the short notice, it’s been…” I trailed off. He didn’t need to know about our latest bounty. “It’s been busy,” I finished with a shrug.

“Well, I’m glad you could make time,” he replied, straightening his blue-and-black Protectorate uniform. He’d gotten another medal since the last time I’d seen him. I idly wondered how, when he’d been stuck on backwater babysitting duty for the last five years. I wasn’t about to ask, though. It was a touchy subject.

We started walking back through the ship, a monstrosity so large it felt more like a station. One of the first Minokawa-class logistics vessels, a ship that had been through hell, supporting operations against the Imperials and even a couple Endbringer fights.

“How is work?” he asked as we walked.

I shrugged, “Busy, like I said. Got a couple good hits. The bounty was enough to upgrade  _ Ikarus _ ’s weapons.”

“And get a new paintjob,” he remarked. “I saw you coming in. The black is nice, you don’t see that so often on the Stratios-classes. Although you do look a bit pirate-y.”

I rolled my eyes. Even  _ if _ that was the aesthetic I was going for… I mean, I was a glorified bounty hunter, after all. “I just got tired of seeing the mismatched hull panels. It was embarrassing to dock anywhere,” I said.

“I thought we could get lunch,” he replied. “Station Exchange opened up a new restaurant, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to wander over.”

“Aren’t you the captain?” I asked jokingly, “It’s your ship, just walk in...but yeah, I’d kill for some real food right about now. Ship’s rations get old.”

“Say no more,” he said, and changed course, leading me to a lift. Once inside, he shrugged out of his uniform jacket and slung it over his shoulder. I raised an eyebrow.

“We just got a new batch of recruits, and as luck would have it, today’s one of their relief days. I’d rather not deal with all the scraping and saluting,” he explained gruffly.

I sighed. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

We both knew that wasn’t the reason. Not saying it didn’t make it hurt any less.

The lift stopped, the doors sliding open. I followed Dad out, into a bustling shopping area. As lively as I remembered, growing up. It didn’t even feel like a military vessel, here. Families doing shopping, some kids playing. The ceiling, forty feet up, was painted a sky blue to emulate a planetary surface.

It was...nice. I hadn’t actually been here since I was seventeen, and it felt just the same. God, I was a different person back then. Idealistic, heading off to Cheyenne Flight Academy, to eventually follow in my dad’s footsteps and become a Protectorate captain. Now I was either twenty-six or twenty-nine, depending on if you counted cryosleep. A bounty hunter with something kind of like morals.

We passed a huge assortment of shops, selling everything from clothes to foodstuffs to datacubes containing all the latest movies. Then he stopped at our destination.

“Robert’s Meat Emporium,” I said, reading the gilded letters above the storefront. “Seriously?”

“My XO said it was lovely,” Dad remarked. “You remember Linda?”

I nodded. “Well, if  _ Linda _ loves it, I’m sure it’ll be fantastic.”

“That’s the attitude!” he said, leading us in. The interior was dimly-lit, with music quietly playing from speakers in the ceiling. Dad got us a table, and we sat.

“So how is Alex?” Dad asked once we’d put our order into the pad mounted at the table. We both had picked simple burgers. “When are you two getting married, already?”

“Oh?” I asked, startled. “Fuck, that must have been when the comms array got fried… so, uh, this is something of our honeymoon, actually.”

Dad choked on the sip of water he was having. “Brenna! Oh, congratulations! If I would have known, I would have—”

“It’s okay. You had work,” I replied sadly.

“No, I could have taken a leave,” he said. “Brenna… I’m happy for you. I just wish your mother were still around to meet her daughter-in-law. I know she’d be proud.”

I looked down, unable to meet his gaze. It had been ten years, but even so, it felt like yesterday when the news had hit. Mom’s ship, the  _ Eir’s Mercy _ , was evacuating a hospital in advance of Leviathan’s arrival. She’d never made it off the planet.

I’d only ever seen Dad cry three times, and that had been one of them.

I cleared my throat. “Well, maybe we can figure something out. I think she’d love to finally meet you in person.”

“Maybe,” he said, trailing off as a waiter brought us our food. He set a plate down in front of Dad, then myself.

“Thanks,” I replied. He simply smiled and walked away.

“So how have you been?” I asked.

“Oh, business as usual. Quiet.  _ Tundral Archer _ spent a week in the bays getting repaired. Other than that…” he shrugged.

“Aww, I hope everyone was okay. The Imps aren’t daring to travel that far behind our lines, are they?”

“Nope. Pirates tried to take her out. What they thought they’d do with a Protectorate battlecruiser… I don’t know. Still, Mary and Elaine took them out no problem.”

“Damn, what were they thinking? How many pirates made it out?”

“None,” he quipped. “Are you going to eat that burger or let it get cold?”

“Oh, right,” I said. I picked it up and took a bite. Then promptly spat it back out.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked as I grabbed a glass of water.

I didn’t answer, trying to get the taste of it out of my mouth.

“Oil,” I finally said.

“Oh, really? It’s not that—”

“Not  _ food _ oil,” I said angrily.

“What?” He stood up and threw his uniform jacket on. He went to stomp over to the kitchen, but I grabbed his arm.

“Don’t, Dad… Can we just go?” I asked, trying to calm down.

“I’m the goddamn captain of this ship, I won’t stand for them treating you like this.”

“Dad,” I said firmly. “It’s fine. Please. It’ll start a thing, and you don’t need that right now.”

He glared at the back for a moment, before sighing and nodding. “Fine. It’s fine,” he said in a tone that suggested he was going to tear someone’s face off the minute I was gone.

I stood, and we made our way out of the restaurant. Out the corner of my eye I was pleased to see the shit-eating grin on the waiter’s face disappear when he saw Dad’s uniform insignia. If I were a better person, I wouldn’t have smirked right back at him. But, alas, I wasn’t a better person.

I led Dad back to the lifts, and hit the button for the C-level docking concourses. “Sorry about that,” I said as the lift hummed into motion.

“No, you have nothing to apologize for,” he said.

_ Another lie we both won’t bother correcting. _

“I just hope it gets easier one day,” I said quietly.

He pulled me into a hug. “It will. I’m sorry, Brenna. One day you’ll be free of this.”

_ No I won’t. People never change. _ “I hope so,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

“I mean it.”

“Yeah,” I paused. “I’m sorry for cutting this short. I should probably be going as it is. We’ve got a big fish we’ve been tracking.”

“And this ‘big fish’ is flagged?” Dad asked, giving me a stern look.

“Yeah, I’m not dumb, Dad.”

“Okay, good… just, be safe, don’t get yourself killed. I can’t retire until I’ve got grandkids to pester,” he said jokingly.

I snorted. “Like I have time for raising kids.” Behind me, the lift  _ dinged _ , and the doors slid open. “I’ll see you when I’m next in the system, ‘kay?”

“I’ll be counting the days. Love you.”

“You too,” I replied as the doors slid shut between us.

I felt like everyone on the concourse was staring at me as I made my way back to the  _ Ikarus _ . It was silly, to be worried about stares when some of us went through so much worse, but… I missed the safety of my ship, of being connected to all the systems. I missed cuddling with Alex, and debates with Jordan over the latest episode of whatever TV show we’d snagged off the media cache.

I could recognize that I’d been thrown into one of those moods, where throwing it all away and breaking fifty percent didn’t sound all that bad. Recognizing the feeling didn’t make it better, though.

The Protectorate talked a big game about being the moral authority, but in the back of my head, at times like this, I couldn’t help but recall that the Imps had no problem with cyborgs. Sure, they had their own issues, but... It stung when “the enemy” was more accepting of me than my own people.

I breathed a sigh of relief as Dock C-85 came into view, my ship’s distinctive warp ring sticking out above the smaller frigates and the more sensibly-shaped cruisers. Of course, the skybridge was still not deployed, so I had to flap over, hovering in place to unlock the outer airlock doors.

“I’m back!” I shouted as soon as I entered the ship proper.

“Galley!” I heard Jordan shout back.

I wandered in.

“That was quick—” he cut himself off when he saw me. “That bad, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’m gonna take off.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t stay to listen. Instead, I made my way back to the cockpit and sat down at my seat.

As soon as the cables reconnected I breathed a sigh of relief. My awareness immediately widened, the ship’s systems filling my mind. Green across the board.

Unfortunately, because of some safeguards I’d place, I couldn’t pilot directly from my mind. When I’d first obtained the  _ Ikarus _ , I’d replaced her single computer with two units, one dedicated to external systems and one on internal. They were two separate, air-gapped networks running through the ship. I only had access to the internal one; I didn’t want to run the risk of someone somehow being able to get control of me through the comms system, or some such.

“ _ Daedalus _ control, this is  _ Ikarus _ , requesting clearance to undock,” I radioed in.

“ _ Ikarus _ , Control. Clear for departure,” the reply came back quickly and curtly. A second later the docking clamps released.

I cut the comms link and cycled the thrusters up to pull out of the station. I could feel the ship respond, both from the vibration of the engine clusters spooling up, as well as the raw sensor data being piped into my brain.

I plugged our rendezvous point into the autopilot and leaned back, losing myself to the flood of sensor data that was  _ Ikarus _ .

 

\---

 

I looked through the viewscreen, at the  _ Torunn _ hovering stately ahead. God, it was a pretty ship. A six hundred meter-tall pillar of jet black armor. At one point it was a Myrmidon-class battlecruiser, but Naomi had modified it so much that I wasn’t sure anymore.

In the center, where the drone bay once was, a truly massive railgun jutted out of the front of the ship. It had twice the typical armor for its class, and no less than three nanite repair systems working in concert. Its upper segment absolutely  _ bristled _ with smaller weapons.

I was glad she was on my side.

The docking tubes of our ships met, and I felt my senses widen even more as the  _ Torunn _ ’s systems joined those of the  _ Ikarus _ in my head. I idly fixed a couple issues with one of her starboard capacitor banks while waiting—

“I’ve got it. Don’t worry,” Jordan said, giving me a wink.

“Hmm?”

“Go see her, it’s fine.”

I grinned, and pulled myself out of the seat. Losing the ship data was worth it.

By the time I made it to the main airlock, most of the crew had filed back to their quarters, except for…

“Sylvi!” Alex exclaimed, throwing her arms around me. I hugged her tight, my wings wrapping around us into a cocoon of warmth.

God, she smelled nice.

Eventually, I pulled back. “I missed you,” I said quietly, giving her a kiss.

“You too,” she said quietly. “I should go get changed.”

“Same,” I said with a blush. She rolled her  _ perfect _ brown eyes and together we walked back to my quarters... our quarters.

She was already out of her flight suit by the time I got my boots off. Wings always made getting mine off a pain, which was why I normally wore looser clothes when I didn’t have to deal with off-ship business.

Thankfully, Alex was there to help, and soon I was free of the damned thing. I collapsed on the bed, and she sat next to me. I wrapped one of my wings around her as she nestled beside me.

“It didn’t go okay?” she asked, the metal of her right arm cool against my bare side.

“Not really,” I replied, a bit more bitterness in my voice than I’d expected. “Someone started shit when Dad was around. Kinda ruined it.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry, love,” she said, squeezing me tightly.

“I mean. I can’t really complain, can I? But every time I visit, it gets worse. That look in his eyes is less hidden, every time I see him. It’s…”

“Not your fault?” she cut in.

“It is. Fuck, Alex. He’s my dad, and… because of me, he went from being the top FAX-rated commander in the Protectorate to...this? Babysitting the shithole that is Genesee. He blames  _ me _ for it, every time I visit it’s just twisting the knife in his gut.”

Alex was quiet for a time before responding. “I’m sorry, Sylvi. But you know he cares for you. We  _ did _ talk a few times, and I have a  _ very _ good sense of people,” she purred.

I snorted. “I finally told him about us getting married. Mumbled something about a comm array eating the message I’d supposedly sent.”

“Oh, that’s good!” she replied. “So when’s the family reunion?”

“When  _ someone _ gets her criminal record expunged. He could get thrown out of the Protectorate entirely for meeting you as it is. A captain even  _ talking _ to a fugitive? Heavens.”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“Alex, you tried to smuggle high-grade neural enhancers into Haven space. You’re lucky all you lost was the  _ Starving Artist _ .”

“What makes you think it was an accident? Maybe I got caught just so I could share a ship with my girlfriend.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if. I’ve seen you without a studio to work in. For the sake of my crew’s sanity, please never,  _ ever _ , go two weeks without your synthesis equipment.”

“Okay!” she said cheerily. “Well, since you’ve given me the go-ahead, I’ll start my drug-fueled lust rampage across the entire Galaxy!”

“Pfft. If only you weren’t tied down with some crazy cyborg girl,” I quipped, kissing the top of her head.

Before I could blink, suddenly she was on top of me, looking down with a...  _ hungry _ look in her eyes. “What’s this about tying down some crazy cyborg girl?” she asked, a dangerous tone in her voice.

_ Oh geez. _

She reached up and opened the cabinet mounted to the bulkhead above our heads, started digging around. If I were a better person, I would have looked away. But I wasn’t.

She cooed in delight, and pulled out a small pink vial.

“Fuck, Alex! I told you to take all that off the ship!” I protested. “I’m too cute to go to jail for smuggling Heartbreak onto a Protectorate vessel.”

She didn’t say anything, only set the vial on my bare chest and continued digging through the cabinet.

I suddenly realized I hadn’t looked in that cabinet in weeks. Anything could be in there.

“So...want to work off some tension?” my wife asked, picking the vial back up and looking down at me. She undid the cap, which doubled as a cute little eyedropper.

I nodded weakly. A drop of Heartbreak landed on my tongue, then hers. Her grin widened.

 

\---

 

Sometime later, I lay in bed, my head resting on Alex’s chest with her arm around me as she slept. A single, solitary cable ran from my free arm down under the bed. Only the barest information about  _ Ikarus _ . It wasn’t much, but it was enough. A basic feel of the ship, a general sense of the power usage and warp system.

I felt the tiniest dip in the capacitor banks, felt the energy pulse to the primary receiver antenna. I knew enough about the quirks of the antenna to know it had picked up a carrier signal and hiked its sensitivity up. None of the transmitters pulled power, so it was a one-way message.

The faintest uptick in the power directed to the co-pilot’s chair on the flight deck. Jordan tuning in, most likely.

I should have gotten up, gone to see what the communication was. It could have been important. But Alex was warm, and the cabin was cold.

The cockpit door’s power cycled up, and I sighed. I gave Alex a kiss, causing her to mumble something in her sleep.

“I’ll be back soon, my love,” I whispered to her, knowing she couldn’t hear, and pulled myself out from under the blanket, eliciting a pitiful noise from her. I quickly threw on a shirt and some underwear, then some pajama pants.

My timing, as always, was perfect, and my door slid open just as Jordan was about to knock.

He rolled his eyes, used to my shenanigans, and spoke quietly, “Encrypted message from the relay.”

I nodded, and stepped out into the common area, my bare feet clinking against the steel-grate floor panels. I followed Jordan to the cockpit. He tapped the  _ replay _ button.

A holograph appeared in front of us. In the center, a small white dot, with the ident of one of our backdoored navigation beacons. Around it passed the occasional ship at high speed. Then it froze. A timestamp, two hours ago.

My eyes widened. It had been a long shot, hoping he’d hit the trading routes. One of many possible moves we’d guessed at, threw a couple hijacked sats at just in case.

And yet, there it was, an orange dot, passing by the nav beacon in slow motion. Next to it, the transponder registration code. Above that, in a slightly larger font, the ship name.

_ Bloodletter _ .


	2. Chapter 2

“Miss Yukimora?”

I ignored my assistant, too busy looking at the holograph before me. A macromolecule, organic, slowly rotating before me. It was beautiful, serene. Truly a triumph of IPR’s research prowess.

And it was  _ wrong _ .

“Miss Yukimora?” she repeated herself.

“What?” I said tiredly. I couldn’t concentrate with her yammering.

“It’s time to work on Swordfish.”

_ Fuck. _

“It can wait,” I said hesitantly. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

“You said that yesterday, and the day before,” she said in a chastising tone. “The Naval Office is already making trouble. Upstairs wants to see results.”

The Swordfish project was the bane of my existence. More properly known as “Fulfillment of Contract 117FA Between the Royal Imperial Navy and Imperial Pharmaceutical Research and Development Labs”, Swordfish had seemed right up my alley, at least when it had started. A single molecular complex, adaptable and suited to a vast variety of needs. Swordfish would save humanity from itself, would be the panacea that we had searched for for millennia. I’d been so proud when I had been selected as the head researcher.

And then the targets changed. Goalposts moved. Swordfish, on the surface, was still a cure-all, but underneath… the demands set upon us by management, by the naval liaisons, all pointed in one direction. An organic chemical weapon, virtually unstoppable.

It was fucking  _ sick _ .

“Alright,” I said, dismissing the hologram with a wave. A few swipes, and a new molecule appeared, this one much bigger, but blurred until the structure was unrecognizable.  _ Classified - Top Secret _ revolved around it in large print.

“You lost your clearance?” I asked her. At some point I really should have bothered to learn her name. Not that it would matter much longer.

She shook her head. “No, at least…” I swiveled around in my chair to look at her. She was squinting at the text. “Your work is classified above my clearance now?”

I shrugged.

“I’ll have to look into that,” she said faintly, worry clear in her cute mocha-colored eyes.

“Until then, I guess I’ll work on it alone.”.

She nodded. “Yeah. Are you going to be fine? I’ll go check with the Intel office and see what’s up.” She started walking towards the door.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” I replied sarcastically. Actually… “A quick question?”

“Yes?” She turned back around.

“I never did ask your name.”

“Oh, I figured you pulled it from my files. I’m Kate.”

I smiled. A cute name. “Okay. Have a good night, Kate.”

“You too, Miss Yukimora.”

“Oh, just call me Alex—” I cut myself off as the door slid shut.

_ Okay _ .

I took a deep breath, looking up at the now-unobfuscated blob hovering over me.  _ You had so much potential, my friend. I’m sorry for this. _

I reached into my pocket, and pressed the button on the device I had stowed. The hologram flickered for a fraction of a second, but nothing more.

I was glad Kate—that  _ was _ an adorable name—had left. No sense having her head on the chopping block next to mine.

I stood and grabbed my jacket, shrugging it on and stepping through the door. The guard outside looked at me funny, but I just gave him a terse smile and walked down the long, curving hallway.

I avoided the lifts, opting instead for the seldom-used maintenance ladders to make my way downward towards the docks. Maybe I was being overly cautious, but I wasn’t about to be trapped when they shut the lifts down.

As it was, I made it to the main docks level without incident. I unzipped my jacket just enough, and stepped onto the concourse, my nose instinctively wrinkling as I was assaulted with the odors of ozone and reactor coolant.

I walked over to one of the sections, containing rows of sleek-looking vehicles parked on the hangar floor. Corp-owned courier vessels. Over the past couple weeks I’d gone out a few times, making noise about how the station gravity messed with my thought process. You know, just one of those silly quirks artists sometimes have. Not that I thought of myself as an artist.

I did the usual game with the supervisor watching the ships. Lean forward a bit, bat my eyelashes, place a hand on his forearm. A sob story about how  _ inspiration _ wasn’t coming to me and oh I wish I could talk to you about it but the next best thing is letting me borrow one of your lovely ships.

They really did think I was crazy.

But it got me inside the cockpit of the ships. He even started it up for me, which was nice, because I was 90% sure the startup sequences on these things changed every time.

The ship lifted off the ground, soaring out of the hangar bay almost lazily. The autopilot he’d set would take me out on a slow orbit of the station, with clear instructions on how to bring it back in, in case I’d forgotten, and to radio in if anything went wrong.

I took a deep breath as the zero-grav set in, my hair rising around my head. In a way, my excuse about it helping me to think wasn’t entirely untrue. It was serene, like floating in one of the lakes back on my parents’ estate.

The letter I’d sent them—old-fashioned paper, to avoid the electronic surveillance—would be arriving soon. Two letters, actually. One confessing to the crimes I was in the process of committing, hamming up the  _ I am a traitor to the Union _ part of it for the investigators. The other, an apology. Not that it was my fault. I hadn’t had any other choice, really.

What was I supposed to do, keep working on one of the most horrifying weapons projects of recent time? I could have resigned my IPR position, but that would have lost my only protection from the Navy. From becoming a pacifist with a gun. I wouldn’t give up my beliefs like that.

When my skills had manifested, my parents had pulled some strings, got the Yangban to look the other way, and got me this research position. Two years, I’d worked for the IPR, making wonderful drugs and chems for the betterment of humanity. Up until Swordfish had turned, I could have seen myself happily spending the right of my life working here.

That had been all well and fine, until one of their political opponents had caught wind. Rumor had it he was preparing a smear campaign, in order to secure the governorship.  _ Governor’s family hides from their duty _ was the sort of thing that sunk dynasties.

After this, though, he wouldn’t need to spend a thing to win against my family. But if it was all going to be ruined anyway, at least I could rest well knowing I'd done the right thing. 

I looked down at the cockpit controls, the unfamiliar knobs, buttons, and gauges looking back at me. The one thing I’d studied—the autopilot—still open on the screen, the guidance to return to the hangar still pulsing away, waiting for me to commit it.

Instead, I hit cancel. Opened a new command, to align to one of the countless stars in the sky, and warp out. Hyeonnae system. Right at the edge of Union space, recently captured by the Protectorate. The station there would be manned, surely. Someone would be there to surrender to.

I hit commit, and the warp drive spooled up. My last thoughts before entering warp and settling in for the voyage were of Kate, hoping she didn’t get in trouble for this.

 

\---

 

I winced as I fell to the deck, the cuffs binding my hands behind my back digging in. My captors laughed, seemingly uncaring about the blood running down my face.

It had all been so quick. One moment, napping in the cockpit of my ship, the next, alarms blaring and the entire console lit up in red. They’d caught my ship, somehow, pulled it into their clutches.

Still, at least it wasn’t Union Intelligence. Or the Yangban.

Not that pirates were  _ that _ much better.

I looked up. I was in a cargo hold of some sort, crates and boxes lashed down around me. There were three of them—four maybe? It didn’t really make a difference.

“So what’s a little thing like  _ you _ doing out in no-mans-land?” one of the highwaymen asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. In his hands, the data cube I’d worked so hard to liberate. I couldn’t take my eyes off it as he poked and prodded at it.

“You won’t get in,” I mumbled.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” he snarled, raising a hand as if to backhand me again.

“High-grade encryption. No civilian has the quantum processing to break in,” I replied, ignoring his threat.

“Like shit. We have resources. We’ll find out all about your secrets, you prissy sector-one bitch.”

I resisted the urge to correct him. I wasn’t a Unionist anymore. Not after what I’d done.

“What’s your name?” he snarled. “Or I’ll have Greta come get some DNA. Save us all the trouble.”

I swallowed. No need for Greta. “Alex Yukimora. And you are?”  _ A name, something, anything that might help. _

He nodded towards one of his cohorts, who was typing into a console, before turning back to me. “Okay,  _ Alex _ , and what the shit are you doing traveling to Hyeonnae? You miss the memo about the Pee Arr Tee owning that dump now?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“No? So what, are you some kinda spy? Or just a turncoat?”

“What was your first hint? The disabled transponder, the data cube, something else?” I asked angrily. “If you had any idea what you’re dealing with, you’d—”

I was cut off by the back of his hand.

“Hey!” one of them shouted. The one at the console. “Check this out!”

The fuckface who’d hit me walked away, to take a look. I pulled myself up to a semi-upright position. His eyes were wide as he read.

“Holy shit. Ho-lee shit,” he said, glancing at me, then back at the screen. “Boys, we just got a promotion. This bitch has a  _ fortune _ on her.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Okay. Dust her ship and lets go.”

 

\---

 

It was always hard to track the passage of time when you were locked in a cell without any information. I’d slept thirteen times since being thrown in here, but that hardly meant thirteen days had passed. It could have been a month, or it could have been a week since I’d been captured by the Werisen Cartel.

What little solid information I had, I treasured. Slightly lower gravity than standard. Based on the smell, an older-type air filtration system. Lights that flickered from time to time, a failing reactor core.

I sat on the thin mattress, looking over at the far wall, five feet away. At the locked door. At the molecular structures I’d been idly scratching into the walls, until they’d taken away any means of making them after the eighth sleep.

At least my captors had been given orders to leave me unharmed. I’d rubbed the skin raw at my wrists, unable to shake the feeling that two sleeps of being zip-tied had caused. Even now, I had to pause, force my hands to return to a white-knuckled grasp of the terrible mattress.

There was a sudden  _ thunk _ that echoed through the floor panels, and the lights flickered out for a solid second.

_ That… didn’t feel normal. _

Suddenly I felt stillness. The mildewy air that blew out of the vent above my head… it had stopped.

_ The life support systems are offline? _

A third  _ thunk _ . The lights went dark again. Ten seconds passed, and suddenly everything was bathed in the red glow of emergency lighting.

_ Reactor failure?  _ No, it had been a sudden drop, not a surge or brownout. That had been an abrupt cut-off.

I took a step over to the door and pounded on it. “Hey! What’s going on?”

There was no response. I put my ear against the wall, hoping for something, anything. I could only hear quiet pings, like the sound the hailstones had made bouncing off my bedroom window growing up.

There was a  _ click _ sound, and the door to my cell sprung open, an inch gap opening. Fail-open? I was glad they had shoddy jail architecture. More red lighting on the other side. With the door open, I could pick up the sound of an alarm. Three short buzzes, repeating. A sound, universal across the galaxy, drilled into me since my childhood.  _ Evacuate _ .

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

I pulled on the door, my muscles straining to haul it open enough for me to squeeze through. I managed to get it a few inches, but it was enough, barely, to squeeze through.

Outside, a dim hallway, the faded paint and rusty splotches bathed in the red glow of the lights. Flickering signs, caked in the dust of disuse, indicated the way to the nearest escape pods.

I ran, following the lights, my bare feet echoing as I bounded down the hall. The thumping and vibrations continued, sounds of the station’s demise clear.

After a minute of running, I made it to a small side corridor, lined with a dozen hatches. Escape pods. Except… they were jettisoned, all of them. Through glasteel windows set in the hatches I could see outside, the deep blackness of space.

We weren’t alone.

A ship, no,  _ three _ ships, clad in Imperial markings, firing upon the station. Whatever defenses the Cartel had were clearly gone now. They hadn’t been able to stop the Imperial Union from attacking.

They’d found me. Somehow.

I had to get off, or radio them, something. I might be a traitor, but I was still an Imperial subject, I had  _ rights _ . A trial, prison sentence… no. An execution. Military law. I would just be delaying the inevitable.

But I could still try to escape.

I spun around, running down the hallways, hunting for a ladder or stairwell. Something, anything, to get me down to the dock levels.

I was never religious but I prayed, begging any god that might listen,  _ please let me get off of this station _ .

My prayers were answered. A door, not to a stairwell, but an airlock. Inside, lockers full of vacc suits. Not ideal, and it would slow me down, but if— _ when _ —the section I was in lost pressure, I would live for a few more hours.

I pulled one on, zipping it up and tightening the seals. The previous owner apparently didn’t wear deodorant, and was a few sizes larger than me, but it didn’t matter. Magboots to keep me on the deck, air to keep me alive. That was the important part.

I chanced a look out the airlock window. The assault continued, blasting large chunks off the station’s hull. Bits and pieces of debris flew everywhere. Something glinted, and I could see…

I could see the burnt husk of a cruiser, spinning right towards me.

I ran, hoping to put as much distance between me and it. Every meter of hall could be the difference between living and—

I looked up from the floor, ignoring the whistle of air escaping from the crack in my helmet.

I’d been thrown by the impact, landed hard. I blinked away tears, feeling my head pound. I must’ve hit it when I landed.

_ I have to get up. _

I pulled myself to my feet, clicking the magboots on just in case. With one hand covering the crack in my glass visor, I looked behind me.

I was greeted by the vast openness of space. The entire section of station had been torn away by the impact, steel girders, debris, and bodies filling the space it had been.

_ I would have been dead in a heartbeat _ , I thought to myself, backing away. I stumbled down the corridor, looking for a way out. My only hope was the docks, a ship to escape on. I wasn’t a pilot, but I didn’t have any better options.

Without the atmosphere, I couldn’t hear the barrage anymore, only feel minute impacts through my feet. Any second that could be me. I was only a chemist, but I could still understand what a charged projectile traveling several thousand meters per second would do to me. At least I wouldn’t feel it.

I found a stair, and pulled myself down the railing, my head too groggy to trust myself to do more than stumble.

A step at a time. Step one. Step two. Step three. It was the only way to keep going on. I had no clue how many levels I had to pass through to get to the docking concourse. I suspected it didn’t matter, based on the wrenching and shuddering of the structure, heaving like a dying animal as I crawled through its guts to safety.

I stopped once, to catch my breath. A moment might make the difference, but I wouldn’t progress. The ungainly suit was holding me back. Too much length in the arms and legs, my fingers barely reached into the gloves at the end of my sleeves. I lifted my arms and shook them, to try and draw them closer.

_ Pop. _

It was the first sound I’d heard besides my breathing. Just above my head, a foot-wide hole in the bulkhead.

An alarm sounded in my suit, and I felt the fabric on my right shoulder constrict. I looked up.

_ Oh. _

My right arm was gone. I hadn’t even felt it get sheared off. The stupid, too-big vacc suit was tightening over the bloody pulp of a stump, to keep air in. It also acted as a tourniquet of sorts. That was nice.

I fell to the ground.

I wasn’t going to make it out alive. They’d atomize the station, with me on it. What little hope I’d had before drained away. I was just… tired. I knew it was the blood loss, or perhaps something else, but it didn’t matter. If I was going to get turned into an unspecified cloud of organic compounds, it wouldn’t make a difference if I was awake for it.

I leaned back and closed my eyes.

 

\---

 

My death was going to be slow and painful.

I’d accepted it, a month ago, after the low oxygen alarm in my vacc suit had woken me up.

Apparently the oh-so-vigilant Imperial Navy had left the job half-done, leaving the station wreckage behind. Maybe in a few millennia interstellar space dust would have worn down the remnants a little.

I looked around at my new home, a handful of chem lamps floating in the zero-gee air the only light. A large circular chamber lined with dead consoles, which at one point had been the station’s control room.

I’d picked through the wreckage, managed to piece together makeshift air scrubbers from some cleaning supplies. Some rations, bottled water, the basics. All the little things that made a place a home.

I’d cleared everything out of the rest of the pressurized rooms, and sealed them off for now. Once my oxygen ran dangerously low I could go in there and maybe get a couple more days of life out of it.

As it was, I had the control room, a short bit of hallway, and an airlock. All my batteries except for one were reserved for the airlock gas pumps. The last one powered a single light, just bright enough to to read and write by.

I’d passed the time by writing, thankful at least that I was left-handed. It meant my “memoirs”—an extremely abridged version of them, at least—could at least be penned in decent handwriting. Maybe one day, someone would stumble upon them, clutched in my dessicated arms, hundreds of years from now.

At least it was something to do.

I looked over at the distress beacon, floating by the pile of blankets I used as a bed.

_ Should I? _

No, it would just bring the Union back down upon me. At least now they thought I was dead. Empty stations didn’t put out distress calls.

Something thumped outside. Probably a chunk of debris hitting the outside of the airlock. Wouldn’t have been the first time.

I sighed, and opened another ration, glancing at the wrapper as it floated away to join the sea of trash I lived in. Ugh.  _ Another _ curry bar. Curry was supposed to be a liquid. I hoped a war crime tribunal had befallen whoever had invented the monstrosity that was the meat-flavored curry bar. The very idea was a crime against humanity.

More thumping outside, almost rhythmatic. I had to have been seeing too much into the sounds. I had to stop that, before I repeated the cacophony of bad ideas that had been the “make musical instruments out of random debris” stage of my new life.

There was a knock at the door.

I froze mid-bite, staring at the smooth-metal indent in the control room’s walls. Was it...was it real? Or another hallucination?

I stood, and pushed myself away, floating backwards to put as much distance between me and the door.

It ground open, and bright beams of light shined into the room, blinding me. I threw up a hand, shielding myself.

“Oh, sorry,” a woman said, in Protectorate Common. The light turned off.

I lowered my hand, blinking.

A figure, helmet-in-hand, dimly-lit by my green chemlight glow. She was my age, maybe a year or two younger. Wings, half-open, extended from her back.

An angel, here to carry me off to the afterlife.

Either that, or the curry bar had expired a  _ long _ time ago.

“Do you speak Common?” she asked. Her eyes were blue, I was pretty sure. Hard to tell from the light.

“Yes,” I said tersely, in her tongue.

“Are you—how long have you been here?” she asked hesitantly.

I shrugged. “About a month, I think. Hard to tell. Is this the end?”

“The end? I hope not. We were just here checking out a lead, but my ship’s life sensors picked up a warm body. Figured we’d at least offer help if you wanted it,” she said, then gestured at my missing arm. “Medical attention and a ride to the nearest station, maybe.”

“A lead?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. I pushed off the wall, landing a few feet away from her.

“Uh, Protectorate picked up rumors of some Imp defector, may have left behind documents. Put a big enough bounty on the files that we thought we’d at least scan around. ‘We’ being the Ravens.”

She said ‘Ravens’ like I was supposed to know what that meant. A salvage crew? I sighed. It was either a good or bad sign that my reputation preceded me.

“I’m Brenna,” the angel offered.

“Alex. Alex Yukimori,” I replied. No sense hiding my identity, when any bounty on me would have my DNA profile attached.

“I figured,” she said wryly. “Don’t really strike me as the Werisen Cartel type.”

I grimaced. “A bounty hunter, then? Here to ship me back to the Yangban for my execution?”

“No. Well, to the second part. Unless you want to go back, but I doubt that. If you’re still defecting, I could bring you to the Protectorate? Or whatever station is nearest. Hell, you could even—” she cut herself off, a faint hint of a blush on her face. “Sorry. Rambling a bit.”

I turned, and floated over to the cabinet I had designated as “random stuff”, digging through it until I found my target.

With a flick, I pushed the data cube towards her. As she caught it, I spoke. “Passage for myself and that cube, to the nearest station with a Protectorate presence. Consider the bounty on that info my fare.”

“Sure,” Brenna said, tossing the cube back towards me. “It would be an honor to deliver you to your destination.” She gave a mock bow, flourishing an imaginary cape.

I couldn’t help but smile at the dorky move. “We should go,” I said. “I’m quite tired of this place.”

As I followed her out of the station and towards the airlock, I couldn’t help but wonder if my parents were proud of me.

I decided it didn’t matter.


	3. Chapter 3

“Sylvi?” Alex’s voice was soft. Her arms wrapped around me, warm skin and metal twining around my neck. I opened my eyes, and she was there. Those curious, ever-thoughtful brown eyes staring into mine. Even now, I couldn’t help but smile.

“Are you sure you want to be in this one?” I asked, wrapping my arms around her.

“You ask me that every time,” she said, her voice teasing. “Has my answer ever changed?”

“I guess not,” I said, leaning forward to give her a kiss. Today she smelled like the sweet scent of the evergreen trees on Valka. Just a whiff brought me back.

It was after we’d finally gotten serious, and we had time between jobs. So we’d taken a shuttle and gone down to the planetary surface, to a pristine mountain lake ringed in trees. We’d made a little camp on the shore, and just sat there for a week, enjoying our time together. My clearest memory of it had always been before we’d retired to bed on the second night. The stars up in the sky, a streak as a satellite burned up in the atmosphere, her arm in my lap as she snuggled next to me, watching me repair it.

Looking back, that was the day I realized I was going to marry her.

“Getting distracted?” Alex whispered in my ear, bringing me back into the present.

“You smell nice,” I blurted out. She giggled.

“I’ll be in the workshop,” she said, kissing the top of my head as she climbed off of me. She made her way out of the cockpit. I sighed as the door slid shut behind her.

“Hey Brenna?” Jordan asked.

“Yeah?”

“You’re hopeless.”

“I know.”

He laughed. I turned my attention back to the controls. “So you’re sure this merc’s reliable?”

“Yeah,” Jordan said. “You’ve asked this a million times already.”

“Right. Sorry, you know how I get with outside help.”

“Oh, do I ever,” he said in a faux-exasperated tone.

I looked out the viewscreen, at the deep blackness of space. We were parked next to an ancient-looking nav relay. It was shaped like a tube with two hundred-yard-long solar arrays sticking out each side, peppered with holes from years of micrometeorites.  _ Torunn _ sat behind it, and the light of the distant star we orbited hit her hull in a strange pattern of light and dark as it passed through the damaged panel’s holes. Out here, where a Protectorate vessel probably hadn’t been for decades, it was a perfect spot for a clandestine meeting.

There was a beep from the sensor array console, and Jordan perked up. “Company,” he said. A second later, a tiny winged ship popped into view in the distance.

“ _ LZA Crow Five Four _ ,” I read off the transponder data as it came in. “Catchy name.” I ignored Jordan’s eye roll, and hit a couple buttons to open up a comms link between us and the adorable little interceptor. “ _ Lazy Crow _ , this is  _ Ikarus _ . Hi.”

“ _ Ikarus _ , Lima Zulu Alpha Crow Five Tac Four, hi,” a woman’s voice came back over the comms. Jordan and I shared a glance.

“Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”

“ _ Lazy Crow _ works,” she continued in a lighter tone than before. "Whatcha got for me?"

“Okay, so. My XO says you know your shit in a fight. How do you feel about a little joint-venture?” I hit a few buttons to transmit the Protectorate bounty file on the  _ Bloodletter _ . “Multiple counts of piracy and smuggling, finally got tagged a couple months ago for an unauthorized killing. What d’ya say?”

“Stand by,” she replied. There was a pause for a minute or so, that I spent tweaking the  _ Ikarus _ ’s reactor profile. Finally, she responded. “Sure. What’s the plan?”

I smiled. I was liking her already.

 

\---

 

I pulsed my engines, bringing me closer to the derelict hull. We’d checked it out a few weeks ago, noting its coords in case it came in handy. Airlocks blown out, interior vacant except for a handful of bodies. Something had gone terribly wrong, and out in the middle of nowhere like this, a single tiny mistake could mean the end.

I reversed thrust, slowing me down to a leisurely drift as I passed between exploded-out airlock doors. My magboots clicked as they adhered to the interior of the room.

“Okay, I’m aboard,” I radioed back to the  _ Ikarus _ . Narrow-band, on a low-power mode to prevent any signal leakage. All three ships had gone on a signal blackout as soon as we’d dropped out of warp. It was probably excessive, but we weren't taking any risks.

I had to tuck my wings tight against my vacc suit to make it through the breach in the inner airlock door, but I managed to squeeze inside. Floodlights from my helmet filled the ship’s corridors with harsh light as I made my way further inside.

It was alway eerie, walking through a wreck like this. Even though we’d given a burial-in-space to the victims when we’d stumbled upon the wreck, I still felt like I was being watched by the dead. Perhaps it was human nature to be uncomfortable when walking through such a blatant reminder of how easy it was to die.

After a minute or so of walking, I came across my target, a half-open doorway into a utility room. I pulled the prybar off it’s magnetic clamp on my hip, and leveraged the door open the rest of the way before stepping in. I made a beeline towards a small console set into the bulkhead, pulling the front cover off with the prybar. Inside, a handful of thick cables labeled in Imperial Common. I shuffled through them until I found one that said...something, but I recognized the glyphs for “transmitter” that Alex had shown me.

I popped open my vacc suit’s storage compartment, and pulled out the little device Naomi had given me. A small cylinder split in two, designed to snap onto an antenna uplink cable. I clipped it onto the something transmitter something cable, and hit the button on it. An indicator lamp flashed red once. Almost immediately, my suit’s comms system lit up with an alert.  _ SOS received _ . A message started playing in my ears.

“This is Captain Hirata of the  _ ITCS Chozo _ , declaring an emergency and requesting immediate assistance…” Alex’s voice said. I’d been in the room when she’d recorded it, but it still made me wince when I heard the barely-contained fear and adrenaline in her voice. God, she was a magician with her voice.

I made my way back to the shattered airlock, and finally let my wings unfurl again. The thrusters mounted to them lit up, and I shot away, the acceleration tearing at my bones. I burned hard for a few more seconds before cutting off the thrust, letting myself drift.

For perhaps five minutes I floated, an insignificant speck out on the outskirts of an out-of-the-way system in Genesee sector. Maybe if the decoy beacon wasn’t active, part of me would have been paranoid, that somehow my ride would miss me. But I knew, the worst-case scenario was me flying back to the sundered ship and waiting for pickup there. Even if it was from the  _ Bloodletter _ .

It was a moot point, though, as a blip appeared on my helmet’s HUD. I fired full reverse thrust to slow down, and ahead of me a darkened vehicle appeared. One of the  _ Ikarus _ ’s four orbital shuttles. As I came nearer, a hatch opened, and I drifted in smoothly. It shut behind me, and I felt the  _ whoosh _ of air filling the cramped cabin inside.

“Took you long enough,” Alex said coyly, her voice muffled by her vacc suit’s mask, spinning around in the co-pilot’s seat to look at me with a faux-pouting expression.

“Hey, you volunteered,” I replied, pulling my helmet off.

“Oh right, I did,” she said with a grin, her hair poofing out a little bit as she took her own helmet off.

I rolled my eyes and started pulling the rest of my vacc suit off. The things were a pain, and that was before they were modified with sealable holes for my wings. I got the top portion undone, and started to work on the mag boots—

“I thought girls stripping was supposed to be sexy,” Alex complained jokingly as she watched me spin in a circle in the zero-g, trying to get the  _ fucking _ boot off. I took a break to throw a glove at her once my spin brought me back around to face her. “Here, let me help.” She walked over, pulling at my boot. Of course the damn thing came off when  _ she _ tried.

Once I was finally free, wearing only the clothes I’d had on underneath the suit, I drifted towards the pilot’s seat and sat down, looking over the controls and programming the computer. Behind me, I could hear Alex pulling herself out of her own vacc suit. “You know, it’s been some time since we’ve had proper null gravity,” she said offhandedly behind me.

“Yeah,” I replied, distracted by the thruster settings. I double-checked to make the warp core was disabled—instead, we’d be using the old-fashioned, slower ion drive. Yet another little thing to minimize any chance of getting picked up on a sensor net.

“How long until we’re home?” she asked.

“A couple hours, why?”

Alex didn’t respond. I finished punching in the programming, and activated the autopilot. There was a  _ thump _ and the shuttle started moving forward, not nearly as quickly as I’d been going, but then again, I was a lot smaller.

A pair of handcuffs drifted up past my face.

_ What.  _ I plucked them out of the air, before turning around, “Alex—” I cut myself off. See, normally I just wore a shirt and some shorts under the vacc-suits. Alex had apparently gone with a different strategy. In the back of my head, part of me wondered if anyone else on my crew also wore a corset and thigh-highs when venturing into the vacuum.

I swallowed nervously.

“What did you think was going to happen, love, when I volunteered to spend hours with you alone in zero-grav?” she asked. “I didn’t toss those at you for you to hold them.”

I glanced down at the handcuffs. Did she want me to put them on? Or put them on her? I looked back up. She’d gotten a flogger from somewhere, and was slapping it against the palm of her hand, looking at me with… a very evil expression.

Well, that answered that.

 

\---

 

_ Ikarus _ buzzed with life. I was fully plugged in, now, and could feel every cable, every sensor, as if it were my own flesh and blood. Through my senses I could feel the crew walking down corridors, preparing for the fight.

She was built as a search and rescue ship, for humanitarian purposes. While we’d refitted her with pulse lasers, energy neutralizer modules, thick armor, and meaty shields… it was still not fit for this. That was where  _ Torunn _ and  _ Lazy Crow _ came in.

There was something reassuring about the feeling I got from  _ Ikarus _ ’s external sensor nets. A kilometer away,  _ Torunn _ floated stately in the asteroid field, the tiny interceptor snug in its shadow. The warm wash of hour-old light hitting the hull, from the distant star they orbited.  _ Chozo _ ’s false distress beacon pinging against me, with echoes following as nav beacons automatically relayed the signal.

It’d been a couple days spent like this, sitting in the asteroid field like three odd-shaped chunks of tritanium. We’d planned on it taking up to a week, but even now, in the back of my head, I worried that they wouldn’t take the bait. Being impatient, I knew, but knowing it was a baseless feeling didn’t make it go away.

_ Bloodletter _ . A Drake-class battlecruiser, outfitted with some of the meanest tech in the galaxy. Nobody knew the captain’s real name, only that he specialized in nanomachine warheads. Missiles that would eat a ship alive if they got past the shielding. Crimes against cyborgs like myself usually went unreported, but when the Protectorate was rarely put in a position where they couldn’t look away, they had no choice but to issue a bounty, even if it was at the legally-mandated minimum.  _ Bloodletter _ ’s captain was one of the bad ones, who actively sought us out, and who was going to stand up for a cyborg, anyway? The big names, the extremists, the Heberts and Bonesaws of the galaxy, were all too busy holding territory to care, too busy making a bad name for the rest of us. Like the Endbringers needed any help there.

But, that was where the Ravens came in. My little ragtag bunch of misfits.  _ Ikarus _ ,  _ Torunn _ , and before it’d been seized,  _ Starving Artist _ . Three little ships dedicated to righting the wrongs. There’d been more, once.  _ Rewind _ ,  _ Branwen _ , and  _ Bloodletter _ .

Did it hurt? Knowing that all of it had been a lie, a charade, a fake name with a fake history? A man who’d once been a comrade in arms... I found myself touching the scar underneath my fake eye. A memento from the last time we’d met. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t fantasized about this moment for  _ years _ .

I felt a shift in the sensor data, a pulse as sensitivities were automatically boosted. A ship was warping in.

“Brenna,” Jordan said softly.

“I know,” I replied just as softly. “Does the signature match?”

There was the sound of typing, then… “It’s him.”

_ Fuck, it’s actually happening. _

“Radio Naomi and Karen, let them know in case they didn’t get the scan,” I said, before mentally taking control. I felt the purr of sublight engines firing up, the hiss and crackle of deflector shields initializing, the patter of boots on hull floors as the crew prepared for combat.

“We’ve got trajectory lock,” Naomi’s voice came over the radio. “Should be arriving between sector Bravo-Two-Five and Delta-Three-Three.”

The signals grew stronger. I felt my hands tremble on my controls. I squeezed down, white-knuckles on the joysticks to keep them still. And then, it was there, right in front of us. A boxy, maroon-hulled battlecruiser, loaded with nightmare missiles.

“Target lock!” I ordered curtly. “Opening a radio link.”

“Brenna?” Jordan asked. I glanced over to see his face, worried.

“He gets the same fucking chance to surrender as anyone else,” I snarled, hitting the buttons. Omnidirectional, in all common frequencies, unencrypted. “This is  _ Ikarus _ . In accordance with Protectorate regulations, you are hereby ordered to stand down. Failure to comply—” I cut myself off as a target lock warning flashed through my sensor net.

“Jordan, set our lasers to PDC mode, I don’t want those missiles getting close to us.”

“Already set”

I punched the engines to maximum, feeling the  _ thud _ as the ship lurched forward. My energy neuts had to be within ten kilometers to function properly, even if that put me uncomfortably closer than I’d normally like to be.

Blips appeared around  _ Bloodletter _ , even as our own blips— _ Torunn _ and  _ Lazy Crow _ —went into motion as well. Missiles, fanning out. I felt  _ Ikarus _ ’s capacitor banks dip a little as our pulse lasers fired upon them. Two of the three were blown apart, but the third hit, causing me to wince as I felt the shields weaken. 72%. Of course he’d hit with EMP missiles first, and save his special warheads for later.

_ Lazy Crow _ swung around into a wide orbit around him, a wide cone faintly illuminating the space between her and  _ Bloodletter _ . She easily dodged the missile sent her way, keeping the warp disruptor on to keep him tackled.  _ Torunn _ , meanwhile, unleashed a volley of shots from her smaller railguns, even as the massive central gun spooled up. The projectiles slammed into his shields, making them glow with excess energy that soon bled away.

And then we were close enough for me to get to work. I fired up the energy neutralizer, feeling the load on the power subsystem increase dramatically. The lights in the cockpit dimmed, the air circulation fans spinning just a little bit more slowly. More importantly, I could feel faint glimmers of  _ Bloodletter _ ’s energy field weakening.

He sent out another wave of missiles. They spread out before converging, and I realized with horror that they were all pointing towards us. Six missiles. I mentally diverted almost all my power to shields, leaving only enough to power the pulse lasers. The lights flickered. Three missiles made it past and exploded against the shields. I gritted my teeth. One more hit, and we’d be down to armor.

_ Torunn _ fired the small railguns again, with  _ Lazy Crow _ launching a pair of tiny missiles that barely caused a shimmer in  _ Bloodletter _ ’s shields. Then came the fireworks. Everyone knows there’s no sound in space, but every time I’d seen  _ Torunn _ ’s main gun fire, I had to remind myself of that. That was the kind of gun you’d see on capital ships, and it  _ felt _ like it. A line of white-red appeared between the two ships, followed by a huge flash as the antimatter-core projectile decimated the enemy’s shields.

_ Lazy Crow _ fired off a single, tiny missile, exploding against the bare hull of the  _ Bloodletter _ even as my pulse lasers peppered tiny holes in him. The response was quick, a full salvo of missile launched towards  _ Lazy Crow _ .

“He's trying to take her out, so he can escape,” I said, mostly to myself. I watched the interceptor put on speed, dodging by virtue of flying faster than the missiles did. The missiles arced around, changing targets… towards us.

“Brenna,” Jordan's voice was tight.

“I know!” I shouted back even as the PDCs fired to try and shoot them down. “Brace for impact.”

The first missile hit out deflector shields, taking them out. The other two that had made it past slammed into the hull, not exploding but  _ penetrating, _ burrowing deep within the armor.

“Jettison what we can,” I commanded as I started to feel an itch through the sensor nets. “Deploy the—deploy the crew.”

Jordan said something, but didn't hear him. I was lost in the feeling from the impacts. One onto the warp ring, another in the shuttle support deck. Agonizingly slow dribbles of acid being poured onto my skin. I couldn't help but let out a whimper.

Alex was an expert with chemistry. Naomi could figure a way to lob anything at an enemy.  _ Bloodletter _ ’s captain… he specialized in missiles. Nanobots delivered via modified kinetic warheads ate through the hull, consuming everything in their path. I'd witnessed it before, when he'd been one of us. No way to stop them except to cut the wound out. The only other option was to hit the escape pods and watch your ship turn into a self-replicating nanobot mist.

“Brenna!” Jordan shouted. I didn't respond. Couldn't respond. White-hot acid crawling through my veins as the machines consumed my ship.

Something pulled at me. Pulling on one of my connections to the ship. “Sylvi, you have to let go,” someone said. Reluctantly I complied, letting all the wires detach from me. Slowly the agony faded away, leaving me lying in my seat, caked in sweat. Alex’s arms were around me, squeezing me tight.

“Brenna,  _ Bloodletter _ just lost its main reactor. Naomi’s asking if she should prepare boarding parties.”

Alex stood up as I leaned forward, cringing at the feel of my sweat-soaked pajamas on my body. I looked down at my control console. All the info I was used to feeling, displayed in gauges and readouts. In the viewscreen a crippled missile battlecruiser sat, lights flickering on the hull, with the smoldering of fires visible through gashes in its armor.

I flipped a switch on the console. Green lights flicked on, and a red crosshair appeared on the viewscreen. With one of my joysticks I adjusted the targeting, placing the crosshair just so. All of the pulse lasers moved in sync, following my motions.

I'd been aboard the  _ Bloodletter _ many times, but the last always stuck in my head, kept me up at night. My nightmares had etched its deck layout into my mind. I pulled the trigger, and the bright green shots of my pulse lasers lanced through the disabled  _ Bloodletter _ .

“Let's go,” I said, as my former teammate's ship exploded.

 

\---

 

“Have you ever had it take this long?” I asked, irritated.

“It's bureaucracy,” Jordan replied, rolling his eyes at me.

“You transmitted the data, right?”

“Yeah.”

I sighed. Bounty-hunting wasn't all the romantic gritty adventure that the entertainment industry liked to sell. It was mostly boredom. Waiting for a catch, five minutes of excitement, and then… waiting for the fucking Protectorate to certify the combat log and ship telemetry so they could pay you.

In our case, the first Protectorate vessel we could find was a stupid little Magnate-class frigate run by an idiot. It had taken ten minutes of Jordan bickering before the captain would even open a data link to accept our telemetry. The only thing stupider than the captain was his stupid little ship design.

I sighed. Maybe I was being unfair to the  _ Bunker _ and it's captain. Maybe he was just having a bad day. “This is  _ Ikarus _ , status update?” I asked over the comms link.

“Stand by,” their captain replied.

I sighed again, and turned my attention to the local map. Holograms of my battered ship, of  _ Torunn _ , and of the silly Protectorate frigate hung in space.  _ Lazy Crow _ was berthed to the rail battlecruiser.

“How are the repairs coming along?” I asked Jordan, bored. I would have felt for myself, but my neural net was still plagued with blind spots, leaving me in the dark.

“Shuttle support is almost repaired, but like I said before, that jump drive is going to need to be looked at. The backup systems aren't built for constant use and I can't promise they'll keep—” Jordan cut himself off as the sensors buzzed. “What the hell? They've just raised their shields, they're aligning out, spooling up warp.”

“What's going on?” I asked. I repeated the question over the comms. There wasn't a response, but the comms monitor lit up with an incoming transmission. Just as it finished sending,  _ Bunker _ accelerated out of sight.

“That was weird,” I muttered, typing out a command to decrypt the transmission, making a mental note to program the comms system to do that automatically.

“Well, we're getting paid, right?” Jordan quipped, as I started reading over the message that'd been sent.

_ Oh fuck. _

“Problem. Big fucking problem. Get Nao—”

“Brenna,” Naomi said over the comms, her voice strained. “Are you seeing this?”

“Yeah. Fuck, this has got to be a mistake. This can be a mistake, right?” I asked. 

“What is it?” Jordan asked, standing up to look at my screen.

“Our database must've been out of date,” I said quietly, my eyes glued to the message, rereading it.

“Brenna… this can’t be right,” Jordan said, his voice stammering. “I… I… What are we going to do?”

I hit the comms. “ _ Torunn _ ,  _ Lazy Crow _ , what’s your status?”

“Aligned to point CCF. Ready to warp when you are,  _ Ikarus. _ ”

“Golden.”

“Okay,” I replied. “Let's get going before we have company.” I cast my eyes over the notice one more time before warp. “We'll survive.”

 

\---

 

_ Sender: Protectorate Bureau of Domestic Security _ __  
_ Topic: Notice of Criminal Status _ __  
_  
_ __ The Pilot, Brenna Sylvi Grovsmed, has committed two (2) suspect infractions, as listed below:

_ Count one: Illegal destruction of a space-faring vessel. _

_ Count two: Unlawful use of an emergency signal for piracy. _

_ Due to the Pilot's special circumstances (partial cyborgization, bounty hunter, small gang), the Pilot’s suspect status has been upgraded to a criminal status. Additionally, suspect statuses have been assigned to the accomplice pilots Naomi Mitchell and Karen Park. See  _ Naomi Mitchell-e929 _ ,  _ Karen Park(2)-49a1 _ for details. _

_ In accordance with PRT § 514.6.2B, a bounty has been placed on the capture or execution of the Pilot, or destruction(s) of the Pilot’s ship. This criminal status will be downgraded to suspect status in sixty (60) days, per PRT § 514.7.5. The suspect status will expire in one hundred twenty (120) days after that, per PRT § 514.7.4. _ __  
_  
_ __ Authorized by the Federation and served in the name of Commander-Governor Veronika Mayer, Genesee System.

_ Time: 2318-01-28T19:02:03Z. _

_ Unique identifier:  _ 1038e0b7 2d98745f ac0fb015 fd9c56dd 704862ad f1139293 6242a2ff 5a65629f

_ Simple identifier:  _ Brenna Sylvi Grovsmed-629f


	4. Chapter 4

The war room was dimly lit, the floor-to-ceiling screens displaying only the blackness of space at present. The only light was from the bleed of the holograph floating above the central table. _Torunn_ , battered and bruised, with both _Lazy Crow_ and _Ikarus_ flush against its hull. Little flecks of light darted around all the ships, tiny drones repairing damage in the break from the running.

“Where do we go from here?” Naomi asked, looking across the table at me. Her dirty blonde hair had more than a few strands escaping from her typically-precise ponytail. Next to her was her XO and boyfriend, Thomas. The pair both wore flight suits with the Ravens emblem proudly emblazoned, in stark contrast to my own t-shirt and jeans.

“We’re three days into this and we’re already only one bad fight away from getting vacced,” I said forlornly, waving away the floating ships and replacing it with a rotating view of the region. It was true, through my ever-persistent cybernetic connections I could feel the stress my ship had been through, and that of the _Torunn_ since we were connected via a docking tube. I could even pick up sparse data from the universal data link from _Lazy Crow_ ’s berth on the _Torunn_ , and she wasn’t doing hot from what I could tell, either.

“So?” Jordan piped up from next to me. “We find a spot to lie low, until the heat’s off us. Deep space, or an unoccupied planet, or something.”

“ _Ikarus_ alone could manage for that long… if we were fully repaired and stocked, and nobody tracked us,” I said. “Unfortunately, half the hull is vacced, we’re running on fumes, and every bounty hunter with a PRT certification is hunting for us. In case any of you forgot, we’re the _Ravens_. We’ve made more than our share of enemies.”

“Go somewhere they can’t follow, then,” Karen replied, from her position leaning against the wall with one foot up. “Last I heard, the Imperials don’t have a problem with cyborgs.”

I glanced over at Alex, who was scribbling something in an old-fashioned notebook, seemingly not paying attention. “Not an option. Even if we could make that far.”

“Hell, visit the Imperium, maybe? Normally I’d say it’s a bit too… Big Brother, but he _is_ pro-cyborg to an extent.”

I paused. “That is true.” I leaned forward and typed a command into the table, and a path of dotted lines appeared, traversing a section of the galaxy. “It’s… not that far, but we’d be crossing trade routes. Wouldn’t go unseen.”

Naomi cut in, “That’s fine. We’ll get seen no matter what, and it’s not well-traveled enough to have a heavy Protectorate presence. I think it’s our best shot.”

“Agreed. Unless any of you guys have better ideas?” I asked the room. Nobody spoke up. “Okay. Let’s prep for travel. Quick warps, battle stations until we get there.” I stood, stretching my arms, and waited for everyone to filter out. Alex was the last to reach the doorway, but she stopped, closing the door and turning back around.

“Sylvi,” she said simply, clutching her notebook and pen.

“Alex,” I replied just as simply, walking up to give her a soft hug.

“You’ve felt different lately,” she replied, returning the hug, her mechanical arm whirring softly. “And your chemistry is… different.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She leaned up to give me a soft kiss before pulling back. “You… haven't noticed the changes? It means we need to win, now more than ever.”

I blinked. Then it hit me.

“Fuck, seriously?”

She giggled. “You really are silly sometimes, love. Spend hours twiddling with capacitor profiles, and don’t even—”

I cut her off with a deep kiss. Hugging her tightly as she melted in my arms. Eventually I pulled back. “We’re going to make it through this, promise. I love you, Alex.”

“I love you too, Sylvi.”

 

\---

 

“Shield array down to thirty-five percent,” Jordan warned. The _Ikarus_ shook as yet another kinetic blast hit the shielding, ominous-sounding creaks echoing through the hull—and my mind.

“I know. Keep tight, don't let them get out of neut range,” I said curtly, not looking up from my work. _Reroute, reroute, reroute_. A game against time, half the systems on backups, a fragmented power net, and a hull ready to fall apart.

“Brenna—”

“What are they at?” I cut him off as I looked up at the screen. Ahead of us, a small cruiser of some sort had us tackled, and _Torunn_ was too busy dealing with a pair of frigates to help.

“Low. It'll be close,” he replied, voice tense.

“Okay. Cut off our lasers, we need the energy,” I said, even as I mentally cycled off the life support and all non-essential systems. We'd be fine without fresh air for a few minutes. “As soon as the field starts to drop, I want us out of here.”

“Copy.”

I felt the trickle of the capacitors draining, slightly more slowly now, into the neutralizer modules. Burning our energy to burn theirs more. The point remained, but it had to fail—

“Align out!” I shouted, as the tackle flickered. I fed power to the warp coil, allowing it to spool up as _Ikarus_ turned.

“Thirty percent… forty… fifty…” Jordan recited as we accelerated. There was a shrill beep as the bounty hunters fired a salvo of missiles. “We won't survive that. Sixty percent—”

“I get it,” I said, cutting him off. I glanced at the screens. _Lazy Crow_ had already warped, and _Torunn_ was set to warp when we did.

The missiles arced closer, and I felt my breath catch. Enough to turn us into so much dust and scrap, with plenty to spare. I mentally shut down the shields, diverting that power to the warp coil. They wouldn't help, not now.

“Warping!” Jordan shouted, and the sensors went blank.

“How long?” I asked, opening my eyes. I was drenched with sweat, my arms shaking on the controls. _You need to relax, Brenna_.

“Seventeen minutes.”

“Okay. Let's get to work. I need bypasses on the primary pulse laser coupling, and the cooling system needs to be manually flushed for the number three cap bank, I lost my control earlier.”

“That's it?” He asked.

“That's all we have time for, before I need everyone back at battle stations. We might be warping into the Imperium core system, but that doesn't mean we'll be safe.”

“You think there'll be trouble?”

“No, but we'll see.” I stood, letting my connections retract back into the seat. “I'm going to get changed, and talk to Alex.”

I made my way out and to my cabin, getting undressed. From what I'd heard, Amar Fadel was a bit eccentric, with a taste for formalities and such. I couldn't help but grimace at that. It did mean I had to wear the _fucking_ dress uniform.

It was a gift from Dad, when I'd first gotten my hands on the _Ikarus_. Cut similar to the Protectorate's uniform style fifty years ago, but in dark grey fabric with silver-threaded trim and insignia. Black pants with a silver line running down the side, tucked into polished almost-ornamental magboots. To top it off, a sword with a curved blade, because swords had totally been relevant at any point in the last five centuries. I still kept it sharp and oiled, just in case.

Everytime I wore it, I was reminded of a past life. Of being seventeen, my transport docking at Cheyenne Academy. One of the students everyone watched, the daughter of two notable captains. Meeting my roommate, some stuck-up girl named Naomi who'd end up becoming my best friend. Drills, and training, and lessons. The accident.

No, actually. I wasn't going to do this today. I put it out of my mind, and stepped out of my quarters, making my way over to the workshop.

It was easy to tell it was ours. The little room was packed, my half dominated by half-built arms and legs, and a spare pair of wings hanging from the ceiling; Alex’s a mad scientist array of flasks and vials and tubes and burners. Of course, there was more than a little overlap, by necessity with all the little features my wife's arm—

“Oh my God you're actually wearing it,” Alex snickered, waving away a holographic molecule of some sort. “He isn't _that_ picky, is he?”

“I don't know, but… well, I almost failed etiquette class, so I think I'll take all the help I can get,” I said with a blush. My tone darkened as I continued, “Did you make the thing?”

She sighed, opening a drawer and pulling out a small vial of clear fluid. “Here,” she said, handing it to me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “You never told me what you wanted it for…”

“Just in case things go wrong,” I said, mentally opening a slot on one of my wings and sliding the vial in. As the slot closed, a needle punctured the lid of the vial, pre-loading the fluid to be injected into my bloodstream. “Hopefully I won’t need it.”

“You’d better not,” she warned, a dangerous tone in her voice. “Please be careful, Sylvi. I don’t… I don’t want to lose you too.”

“You won’t,” I replied, giving her a tight hug. _God, I hope so_. “It’ll probably be hectic once we dock. I don’t know if I’ll see you before I have to go meet him.”

“That’s fine,” she said, pulling me down for a kiss. “And I expect you to be wearing that uniform tonight, Captain.”

“Of course,” I said with a blush, ignoring her snicker as I fled the workshop and made my way back to the flight deck. I sat back down in my seat, ignoring the look from Jordan, and let the interfacing cables worm their way under the uniform and into their sockets.

The connection that normally brought my peace-of-mind only brought that dull ache that had become typical over the past few days. _Ikarus_ was hurt, and the constant attacks we’d weathered only opened more wounds and hurt the hull more. Here, in the safety of the ship’s net, I could finally admit to myself the thought that had been at the back of my mind:

If something didn’t change, _Ikarus_ ’s last battle wouldn’t be far away.

I internally sighed, and put my focus on smoothing the power flows from the damaged reactor cores. Thankfully, they were generating enough power, but in spikes and surges that were putting stress on all the electrics of the ship. In any other situation, I would’ve shut one down to repair it, but… time.

“Everyone to battle stations,” I said to Jordan as I felt the warp drive start to spool down, the ship shudder as it decelerated from faster-than-light speeds. A few seconds later, my passive sensors were suddenly awash with data as we dropped out of warp. The tiny blip of the _Lazy Crow_ was already here, and only a couple seconds after we dropped in, the massive hulk of the _Torunn_ appeared next to us.

The nav computer slowly put our position together from the sensors. The planet Larino, just where we’d wanted to be, high in orbit above the slumbering gas giant.

It also picked up the presence of another ship. At least, I thought it did, my sensors were going insane. I looked up at the screens, adjusting the controls to zoom in on where it was. A dark hulk, a little smaller than the _Ikarus_ , that almost looked like it was flickering. If I remembered my Academy training correctly, it was a _Vigilant_ -class.

“What the fuck?” I said, mostly to myself.

I was interrupted by something else—warp signatures dropping out of space around us. The bounty hunters, surrounding us. I could feel the wash of their targeting signals hitting our hull, just as the console blared a target lock warning.

“Shields up!” I shouted, mentally diverting as much power as I could to the shield arrays. Even as I did that, there was a buzz from the radio, a transmission from the flickering ship. Wide broadcast, unencrypted. “This is Captain Isabelle Hernandez of the _Blink_. You have entered Imperium space. Stand down, or I _will_ fire.”

I grabbed the radio, mashing the transmit button. “This is Brenna Grovsmed, Captain of the _Ikarus_ and leader of the Ravens. We request asylum in the Imperium.” I wished my voice didn’t sound so frantic.

“I know who you are,” the _Blink’s_ captain replied tersely.

“Okay then,” I muttered to myself, careful to make sure I wasn’t transmitting. “Jordan, switch to passive targeting and get a quiet lock on these guys. I don’t like this.”

There was a burst of data from the head enemy ship, an encrypted communication. The other ships in the fleet started transmitting as well. They were talking with each other instead of shooting, that was good, right?

“Brenna,” Jordan said quietly. “She’s arming her systems. The _Blink_.”

I nodded. I could barely feel it myself, the flickering cruiser’s targeting signals hitting the hulls of our attackers and reflecting every which way. They weren’t hitting us, which was hopefully a good sign.

The _Blink_ radioed again, “No Imperium bounty has been filed on these ships, and no extradition request has been authorized. Fire and you will be destroyed.”

There was a tense silence. I glanced at Jordan, his face was filled with worry, and mine was certainly much the same.

The console beeped, and suddenly I felt the tracking radars of the bounty hunters stop. They began turning away. “Holy shit,” I said to myself as they warped out.

A packet of data hit us from the _Blink_ , and I looked up to see a waypoint appear on the screen in front of me. The _Blink_ ’s captain radioed again, her voice stern. “Align and warp out to the transmitted point. I’ll escort you in.”

I shrugged at Jordan. “Well. That coulda gone a lot worse.”

 

\---

 

Once again, our modest fleet dropped out of warp, the world around us reappearing.

“Wow,” Jordan said quietly, his eyes glued to the screen. “That’s a thing.”

Outside, a vast shape. _Vast_ was an understatement, really. It made the _Daedalus_ seem tiny in comparison. A sphere, maybe ten miles in diameter, just in front of us. Tens of thousands of tiny flecks swarmed around it, some hauling huge pieces of hull the size of the _Ikarus_. A massive, hollow shipyard. The crown jewel of Imperium Inceptivus.

It was almost dwarfed by what it was building. Extending out of both sides of the sphere was a long, thin shape, almost like a giant fishbone that stretched 30 miles long. It glittered with the sparks of drones welding pieces onto it.

We followed the _Blink_ in towards the massive station, and as we flew closer, I was shocked to see a piece of the sphere detach from the station, creating an opening that we flew towards.

“Brenna…” Jordan said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking at the transponder readings… that _thing_ is transmitting as a ship. The _Imperium_ …”

“Fuck me,” I whispered under my breath, looking closer. There was no giant engine to see, but hundreds—no, _thousands_ —of smaller engines. Smaller being the size of our entire ship. “I see what they say about megalomania.”

Our ragtag fleet disappeared into the shadow of the monstrosity as we flew closer. This close, the amount of radio traffic and data hitting my hull was almost painful. Jordan cut the drives as we drifted through the opening in the hull.

Several hundred feet later, we popped out the other side, into the interior of the ship. It was hollow, in a sense. A massive hive, tens of thousands of drones flying every which way. Below us, huge scaffolding around the spine of the fishbone ship they were apparently building. I hardly noticed the feeling of tug drones latching onto our hull to pull us into one of the docking berths lining the inside of the “shell”. Throughout the ship, I could feel air rushing in to fill the spaced portions of the decks from the numerous holes in our hull.

I stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of the stupid dress uniform, and made my way down to the airlock. No Alex, no signs of the remaining crew. They were off keeping the ship in one piece, even now. Getting there took twice as long thanks to the usual path being blocked by sealed bulkheads, and by the time I made it to the airlock and cycled it open, we were already berthed, in spots next to the _Torunn_ and _Lazy Crow_.

Outside, the docking concourse was like nothing I had ever witnessed before. Marble pillars and gleaming floors made of polished stone. The skybridge connecting the _Ikarus_ to the spectacle was made of brightly-polished brass, with the typical mass of wiring and piping hidden inside conduits instead of merely being tucked behind a grate. I couldn’t help but glance over the edge, to see the curvature continue for _miles_. So much enclosed air that there was a bit of a breeze grasping at my hair as I walked down from my ship, towards the stationed soldiers.

There were twenty or thirty of them, and I saw more stationed behind the pillars. Heavy purple-colored body armor and rifles, and here I was with a fancy sword and a pocket pistol hidden inside my leg. As I was walking, a woman appeared, stomping towards my ship from the concourse. Deep black hair ending halfway down her back, and a purplish uniform with golden insignia and trim. It suited her well; Alex would’ve been swooning if she were here.

“Captain Grovsmed,” she said flatly as my boots hit stone. I couldn’t help but smile when i recognized her voice.

“Captain Hernandez, was it? Thank you for your help earlier.”

“Dr. Fadel would like to see you.” Her reply was just as terse. “Please follow me.”

“Sure,” I said even as she started walking away. I hurried after her, the guards staying around us as well. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice the layout of the station. Every few hundred feet, we’d pass through heavy airlocks, with what looked like expansion joints between the locked-open doorways. I surmised it had something to do with how the station was built, or perhaps it was similar to the segment that had opened up to let us in.

It was all surreal, to be honest. Dr. Amar Fadel, the megalomaniac engineer specializing in remote systems. An empire built on drones. There was something very Simurghey about it, but instead of AI, it was all bruteforced by humans. A massive bureaucracy that had turned a roving drydocks into an independent Empire.

Captain Hernandez opened a door, stepping aside and gesturing for me to enter. Inside, an opulent waiting room of sorts, that could have held twenty people with ease. There was a table stocked with assorted foodstuffs, and a small fountain even gurgled away against one wall.

The soldiers waited outside, leaving just me and her alone. I couldn’t help but clear my throat and quip, “Nice place.”

I could hear the eyeroll in her reply. “Dr. Fadel likes to put on a good show.”

I walked over to the table, trying a little cracker thing with what looked like fish atop it. “Well, I’m not complaining. Fresh food is nice.”

Captain Hernandez shrugged. “It’s a bit too fancy for me, personally. I don’t know how rich people stomach eating stuff like that all the time.”

I swallowed my bite. “Beats rations.” There was a bit of an awkward pause. “So uh, is working for him just what it seems like or…?”

“He’s… interesting. It’s a good job. Pays well. Isn’t terribly dangerous,” she said, not very enthusiastically. “A lot of people would say he’s arrogant, but he’s in his position for a reason.”

“So why are you here?” I asked idly, grabbing another cracker thing, this time with some sort of dip.

Captain Hernandez gave me an odd look. “I grew up here.”

“Cool,” I said awkwardly. “I’m Brenna, by the way.”

“Isabelle.”

The door opened, and a soldier stuck his head through. “He’ll see her now.”

She nodded, and looked over at me. “Let’s go.” I nodded and followed her out and down the corridor a short ways, before stopping at a set of wooden double doors with no less than ten guards stationed outside. Isabelle gestured, and a pair of them opened the doors for us to enter.

I was expecting some sort of throne room, but instead I was hit with the smell of… old-fashioned paper books. A library of sorts, it seemed. An impractically-high ceiling held up by narrow fluted pillars, between which were shelves of books stacked neatly. Isabelle lead me forward, towards a man at the far end of the room.

It _was_ a throne room, apparently. An opulent throne of fine fabric and gold trim sat on a dias. There was a dark-haired man in a business suit seated on it, with a crown of gilded laurels. Dr. Amar Fadel. He wasn’t as tall as I was expecting.

He looked me up and down from his position on his throne, as if judging me. I was _quite_ grateful I’d shown up in something better than my usual flight suit when he finally stood. “Greetings, Captain Grovsmed. What brings you and your… organization here?”

_Right to the point._ “Asylum,” I replied simply. “It’s not safe for any of us in the Protectorate, and the Imps… well, they’d shoot a third of my crew on sight.”

Dr. Fadel paused for a second. “And what makes you think you would be welcome here, Captain? I reviewed your bounty data before you docked. It was interesting, to say the least.”

“I’ve seen it too. It failed to mention that the crew of the _Bloodletter_ were involved in hundreds of killings involving cyborgs. It also failed to mention that, until an hour prior to our battle, they were crim-tagged.”

He was quiet for a moment, staring down at me. I met his gaze calmly. Finally, he spoke. “I will be frank. I have significant business dealings both with the Protectorate and the Imperial Union. Spending the political capital on harboring criminals is… unwise.”

“That’s a death sentence and you know it,” I said angrily without even thinking. “We have nowhere else to go.”

Dr. Fadel continued speaking as if my interruption had been choreographed. “That is incorrect, Captain Grovsmed. There is one other option. Taylor Hebert.”

I blinked. “You _seriously_ think I’m going to go to her? She’s not an option, she’s a fucking psycho warlord!”

“She is also a cyborg like yourself. You shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

_Whatever the fuck THAT was supposed to mean._ “She gives cyborgs a bad name. We aren’t all terrorists and pirates.”

“Yes, but you are, Captain,” Fadel said flatly. “According to data you _personally_ transmitted to the Protectorate, the Ravens set up a false distress beacon inside a derelict passenger ship, waited for the _Bloodletter_ to show up, and then spaced the hull and killed the entire crew.”

“Your point?”

“That doesn’t sound like piracy to you?”

“You’re taking things out of context,” I said quietly.

“Captain. With all due respect, your place is at the mercy of the Undersiders. I am deeply sorry if this is unfortunate news, but your fate was sealed the moment you laid that ambush.”

“I… I can’t,” I said shakily. “My father, he’s a Protectorate Captain. They’d—”

“I’m afraid that is also incorrect.” Fadel’s tone became apologetic as he continued, “There was a news release several days ago, announcing one Audun Grovsmed has been stripped of his command and placed under arrest.”

I… I didn’t know how I felt. Empty? No, I could feel horror gripping my heart as the news hit me. Dad… they’d gone after Dad. It hadn’t been enough to put him on shitty details, shove him as far away from where he could be useful… now they had to do this. My head reeled, the part of me still back in Academy listing off all the crimes they’d throw at him just because they could. If he was _lucky_ they’d discharge him and stick him on a prison ship for the rest of his natural days.

“...that be acceptable?” Fadel had been talking. I hadn’t even noticed.

“I… sorry?” I asked, dumbly.

“The Imperium will refit and resupply the Ravens to your specifications, provided you pass a message to Ms. Hebert on my behalf. Is that acceptable?”

I sighed. He was right. There was nowhere else for us to go. At least he was kind enough to offer to fix us up. “Very well,” I said simply.

“Excellent,” he said, as if my acceptance was a foregone conclusion. “Captain Hernandez has volunteered to look after you until repairs are complete.”

“What?” Isabelle said loudly, causing me to jump. I’d forgotten she was even here. “That’ll take _weeks!_ I have duties to do, you can’t just have me babysit—”

“You forget your place, Captain. I _can and will_ have you ‘babysit’. Captain Henderson will take over your assignments.”

Isabelle _bristled_ at that. “I'm not… She's not… the _Potion_ is hardly qualified!”

“And yet my decision stands. Was there anything else you needed, Captain Grovsmed?”

“Uh…” I paused. “I guess not? Thank you.”

“Then you are dismissed. You’ll find your stay here to be a pleasant one.”

“Cool,” I said dumbly, backing away. A peeved-looking Captain Hernandez led me out of the throne room. When we were out, I cleared my throat.

“So uh, about that babysitting…”


End file.
